"Business, commerce" - Dimon explaining the New Russia to Kostya

Dimon meets Kostya at the bus stop in Moscow, looking like a completely different man from the small-time car thief Kostya once knew. The now-legitimate businessman Dimon has a spacious office and secretary, a wife with two kids, and drives a new BMW X-5 SUV. “It’s different now then when you went to prison,” an older, wiser Dimon tells his brat, “you don’t need a gun to get money now. It’s all business…commerce.” Kostya stays silent, remembering how Dimon drove off and abandoned his buddies to their fate. Dimon hands him a bag of hundred dollar bills and Kostya tells him not to let his kids turn out like they did. As Kostya walks away, the policeman hired by the prison guards to kill Kostya pulls out a gun. Dimon tackles the assassin and gets shot several times in the chest, but not before smashing the killer's (an off duty cop) head in with a brick. Kostya realizes that his friend has atoned for his cowardice with his life.

Kostya takes the keys to Dimon's X-5 and hits the road headed away from Moscow, determined to deliver a letter Kolya wrote from prison to Dashka. Meanwhile, Dashka finds herself in deep trouble after she tries to blackmail a regional oligarch with a voice recording of him ordering the contract killing of his business partner. Dashka is forced to flee her town and the police, and while on the run, literally bumps into Kostya and asks him to help her get away from the oligarch's security teams. Kostya drives her to a dacha to tell her what happened to her brother in prison, but Dashka gets violent and starts hitting him. After Kostya locks her in a cellar to calm her down, he gives her the letter from her brother. After another night in the cellar Dashka gets away and hires a gang of thugs to beat up Kostya and steal his BMW X-5.

Dashka on the outside looking in

At this point, since the audience doesn't know what the letter said that so enraged Dashka, the story gets convoluted, with some unlikely plot twists. When the local thugs hit Kostya over the head with a baseball bat and dump him in the river, he is rescued by an elderly local fisherman and his babushka wife. The elderly couple's daughter, the village doctor, nurses Kostya back to health and notices that he is amnesiac. Given the shortage of good men in the countryside and her situation raising a young daughter alone, the doctor discusses with her mother the idea of convincing Kostya that he is her husband.

Dashka develops remorse for what she did to Kostya, and demands that the local thugs tell her if they left him alive after stealing his car. When they ignore her and drive off, she somehow manages to slip into their auto repair yard, steal the BMW and burns the place down (this part of the movie requires suspending some disbelief). Back in the village, the babushka is posting flyers describing Kostya and asking if anyone knows him. When Dashka shows up asking for Kostya, the doctor tries to deny that she has seen him, but Dashka follows her home and makes peace with the man who she hated for carrying a passport with her brother’s name on it, and for having his life exchanged for her brother's life. Kostya remembers what actually happened - that the prison guards murdered Kolya in prison just so that they could save a few hundred dollars by giving him a real passport instead of having to make a brand new fake one. The letter he carried was Kolya's farewell to his sister.

Kostya holding Dashka on the ferry crossing Lake Baikal

With this horrible truth now acknowledged between them, Kostya asks Dashka where she will go. Dashka says that she and her brother always wanted to go to some tropical paradise, to find heaven on earth. Kostya tells her that there is no heaven on earth, and that she must find a better life than stealing and fraud. She asks him if selling mayonnaise at the market is a better life, and then asks how you would describe using only text messaging the beauty of Lake Baikal. Kostya says they should see Baikal. The last part of the film turns is a road trip love story, and this part sets the sequel apart from the original. But since this is a Russian movie, neither one of the lovers can escape their past.

Vladimir Vdovichenkov next to a poster for Bumer 2

Overall, in spite of Dashka’s supergirl antics, I found Bumer 2 a more believable, human story than Bumer 1. The cinema photography and views of the Russian countryside are also better than the first film, with the car being the centerpiece but not the star of this movie; Vladimir Vdovichenkov shows why he is one of the biggest stars in Russia today as a survivor who has turned into a hero. The popular soundtrack includes the theme song, Ya Svoboden (I Am Free) by Sergey Shnurov, a hip hop artist who dedicated his track about Siberian prison life to Mikhail Khodorkovsky
(this track is also used as the intro music for the Moscow talk show on Radio Svoboda).

To watch the videos referenced in this post follow the links below:

- A clip from the movie featuring the hit song "Ya Svoboden" (I Am Free; "Я Свободен") by Shnur (Шнур). The ironic chorus translates as: "I'm free - like a bird in the sky"